Tuesday 23 April 2019

Every Man for Himself and God Against All

Walking back home earlier today I discovered the local sparrows in much consternation; a magpie raid was in full flow. It's been a warm Easter and they must already be incubating - the magpie would have been after eggs, although I've seen them take live fledglings regularly over the years too. 

Spring is a low-level guerrilla war fought out in a thousand tiny skirmishes a second, right on our very doorsteps and lawns, inside our hedges and flowerbeds, across our rooftops and driveways. It's a conflict of ambushes and surprise attacks, of espionage and manoeuvre - one in which nobody has real allies but all have enemies, where no tree or bush can be trusted not to harbour predators with murderous intent, and no mercy or quarter is ever expected or given. 

It is hard to believe in a compassionate creator god if you spend any time watching nature. You don't even have to go out into the wilderness. Just sit in a suburban garden and watch. I've seen dogs tear the belly out of a still-living hedgehog and pull out is entrails. I've seen a cat break a mouse's spine just for fun and leave it broken and bleeding but still gasping for breath, and had the task of having to put it out of its misery with a spade. I've seen the local sparrowhawk unceremoniously spread the contents of a pigeon's digestive tract, undigested seeds and all, across my patio in the process of ripping out its organs. It might be all barbecue, sandpits and deckchairs for us, but for animals it's a world of misery and fear - through no fault of their own. 

"April is the cruelest month." It's also the best month for a D&D campaign; it makes me long for a bit of survival horror. 

15 comments:

  1. Animals in Spring: Oh God why is everything trying to kill me?
    Humans in Spring: Man, I can't deal with all this pollen.

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  2. How about a warning next time. I usually check out your posts as I sit down to dinner. Yeesh.

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  3. And the little shrikes impale the corpses of insects, rodents, lizards, and other birds on thorny branches or barbed wire, to return later and rip off their flesh to devour.

    These cute little gray sparrows are the most disturbing animal I've ever seen.

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  4. Sometimes the beautiful sounds of nature we hear, specifically bird calls, are desperate warnings of mortal danger for the species in question.

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    1. True, although I also think it's hard not to imagine that there is joy in birdsong too. There is something gleeful in a robin's song, for instance - like it just really enjoys it.

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  5. Not sure the sparrow looks at it through the same eyes as a human (in the sparrow's position) might.

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    1. Hard to imagine what they think, really, except that they certainly don't like it when magpies show up.

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  6. That's harsh. My backyard wildlife is all about sex rather than violence right now. In an insane turn of events the male squirrels in my neighborhood have all decided that the albino female who lives in my tree is the hottest thing there is and are all competing for her attention.

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  7. Nature and the entire universe is a strange, strange thing and it is clear that it is quite divorced from human morality or at the very least of our convenience. THAT is why I'm not a fan of the 'hippy' (I know, poor term but whatever) portrayal of 'nature' in fantasy as this kind, caring and fragile thing being destroyed by humans. How nature is all puppies, cute birds and sad advert of Panda going extinct.

    Nature is cruel. Uncaring. it could be that whatever creator God out there never saw fit to make a world where everything is easy. It could be some byproduct of how life evolved; that there was never any other possible path for life but competition and devouring. After all even plants will compete for sunlight exposure. Either way one thing is certain: nature is not kind.

    Mother Nature should not be personified as some loving mother being tortured by an ungrateful child but rather as some cosmic, primordial chaos. Less Gaia from Captain Planet and more Tiamat and Cipactli. There is a reason why untamed nature is so associated with vicious, dangerous things in myth.

    "The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in his control, and not the other way around." There's a damn good reason why Kaiju tend to symbolize nature's unbridled, un-tempered power. Nature will fuck you up! It will eat you, it will shit you out and not care.

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    1. The technical replacement for "hippie" is Romantic. It's a reaction to the massive ongoing changes resulting from the Scientific Revolution. Longing for stability, etc.

      And we are all world creators here. We understand why God didn't make the world easy: His PCs need a challenge or His players will abandon Him.

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    2. I am sympathetic to the "nature is cruel" view, but at the same time, I think it's a mistake to personify it at all. It just is what it is. How could it be otherwise?

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    3. If one sits with a place long enough (quite literally, watching the seasons pass), the notion emerges, that there is an imaginal and a material dimensionality to everything. Nor should we limit ourselves to a post Cartesian binary...there exists a multi-dimensionality.

      It (and we, it is a mistake to imply separation from nature, even Sellafield blossomed just the same, from within whatever explosive act of creation generated life) is multi- faceted, exists in multiple states--- all with validity depending upon one's positioning.

      Animistic views are hardly less coherent than 'do not personify' perspectives. What effect a grove within the mind of a poet? What effect a vein of gold in the dream of a prospector? An oak tree was an acorn, is timber, is the green man, is a place to have a picnic, is a Darwinian battlefield. As matter alone, it is only one thing.

      Best to give the primal adversary it's due...in all it's myriad states, no need to limit our view. In fact, it's probably detrimental to do so.

      Here's an interesting link. Take a read and tell me personification is an error. Then think of what the same could accomplish for, say, The Amazon.

      Thanks for posting!

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    4. Hmm, link vanished. Google Whanganui River Human Rights if you're interested.

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  8. The compassion of God and apparent brutality of nature can be confusing if one wants to hold on to them both. But at the same time, nature only seems brutal because we see the value in the beings that are killing and devouring each other. No Creator, then no value (in those living things) and no morality (in us to judge their apparent brutality with).

    That doesn't explain why things are the way they are, but it does ask why we might have value and morality if our God is cruel.

    Anyway, a haiku I wrote a decade ago:

    Lovely spring flowers
    The sound of crickets chirping
    Munching on their guts

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